Time to Rethink What is 'Normal'?

Where is the dividing line between ‘being a bit different’ and having a mental illness that needs treatment and professional help? Bridget Kendall is joined by novelist Jerry Pinto, who has turned personal experiences of growing up with a bipolar relative into an award-winning book, Professor of Disability and Human Development Lennard Davis, and autism research pioneer Professor Uta Frith.

Jerry Pinto

After spending ten years free-lancing, teaching mathematics writing television scripts and audio-documentaries and indulging in sundry other acts of journalism, Jerry Pinto got a ‘real job’ with an alleged media company that was actually into selling space and was only peripherally interested in news. He left to join a travel dotcom and then returned to magazine journalism as Executive Editor of Man’s World magazine. Later, he joined Paprika Media, the publishing house that brings out Time Out Mumbai and Time Out Delhi. His first novel Em and The Big Hoom has won the Hindu Literary Prize and the Crossword Prize for fiction.

Photo: Chirodeep Chaudhuri

Lennard Davis

Lennard J. Davis is Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the
University of Illinois at Chicago, where he is also Professor of Disability and
Human Development in the School of Applied Health Sciences, and Professor of
Medical Education in the Medical School. His latest book is The End of Normal:
Identity in a Biocultural Era. His other works on disability include Enforcing
Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body and My Sense of Silence. He was
awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for his book A Cultural History of Obsession:
From Fascination to Pathology.

Uta Frith

Uta Frith is Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Development at
University College London and Visiting Professor at Aarhus University. During
her career spanning 50 years she has been concerned with finding out the
biological basis of neuro-developmental disorders. In her book Autism – Explaining the Enigma
Uta first presented and elaborated on the idea that the social impairments of
autism were due to a lack of our automatic tendency to attribute mental states
to each other, also known as ‘mentalizing’ or ‘having a Theory of Mind’. Uta
has also translated Hans Asperger’s seminal paper and set it into the context
of autism which led to the rise of interest in Asperger Syndrome.

60 Second Idea to Change the World

Lennard Davis says that for those of us who occasionally can't
remember proper names, as in book and movie titles, actors, acquaintances and
the like, we should adopt a new convention.
When that moment of non-remembering occurs, we should be allowed to fill
the void with the two-word expression:
‘Proper Name’, or ‘PN’. Everyone knows that the actual name will
surface within minutes if not seconds, so the conversation can continue to flow
without embarrassment or boredom.